I’ve just gotten back from my first ever digital vacation—I spent five days in the Caribbean offline. Well, I’ll admit—I didn’t go completely offline. What I did was commit to 5 days of zero digital communication, and I didn’t answer or use anything on my phone. (It helped that I was abroad, so I didn’t want to pay insane roaming fees associated with both voice & data service.) The place where I stayed had free wifi, and I had my laptop with me so that I could write. My Kindle also has 3G and wifi. Ultimately, it was a matter of choice and then self-discipline to be out of touch. Some observations:

1. I wrote in my journal a lot more. All the things I might have tweeted or posted to Facebook went into a personal journal. It made me realize that since I don’t share deeply intimate details online, I have a lot of thoughts & experiences that don’t get documented in any way anymore. I have been, at most times of my life, an extreme self-documentarian (it’s probably what makes sharing random bits of it not that big of a deal for me), and even though I download Twitter backups, I’m wondering what I’ll be missing from this chunk of my life when I look back and see only the public bits. I still carry a paper journal with me everywhere; it just never gets used.
2. The only real urge to get onto Twitter and Facebook I had was when Mubarak was rumored to be leaving, and then actually resigned the next day. Social networks have become my lifeline for news & analysis, and though I had CNN International, Al Jazeera English and MSNBC at my disposal, I missed jumping into the breaking-news frenzy with my friends and colleagues.
3. Email, on the other hand, was a daily challenge not to think about checking. I didn’t necessarily want to know what was going on with work, but I had the nagging feeling of, “Does anyone need me?” It’s a big part of my identity, both professionally and personally, to be useful. I had to know that I was needed or missed. (Something I’d learned earlier in my online life, by the way, is that you cannot rely on social networks for this. Once you drop out, it’s “out of sight, out of mind.”) I need to work on this being such a big part of my identity, I think. A friend of mine says, “Truth is, you’re not needed. You’re completely replaceable,” at least in the professional sense. Accepting that is an exercise in a zen kind of freedom.
4. I was irritated by the feeling of not knowing what was going on in the world when I woke up every morning. I compromised by continuing to abandon the immediate picking up of my phone to check my social networks for news, but instead picking up my Kindle and going to the New York Times’ mobile site.
5. Sometimes my desire to get online really did feel like addiction. It reminded me of when I quit smoking, and my brain would try to make these little deals with me to have a cigarette. Luckily, I read a really good book to quit smoking that also helped me with answering those deals (except for the above news deal, I caved on that one). There’s a study that shows that stuff that happens online releases oxytocin in our brains, the same chemical that’s released in cuddling and affection. I suspect I was feeling a real lack of that experience and my “addiction” was trying to make it happen. “Just a little bit,” my brain would whimper.
6. I also fought urges to get just a little bit of work done. I would imagine for a second that I could just do that one writeup that was waiting to finished, and then I’d walk away. But just as I’m not a casual smoker, I know I’m not a casual worker. Just one and I’d be hooked, and back in the deep end. I chose to stay away and it worked for me.
7. Ultimately, all those urges were about self-discipline, something that’s lacking from the bigger discussions of, “Are we spending too much time online?” We worry that Facebook is going to suck us in and eat up all our time. It’s not Facebook (or Twitter), it’s you. You are choosing to go there and spend time, and you need to choose how long you’re going to be there. You do it with TV, you do it with going out with your friends, you do it with reading books. These tools are no different, except that you’re getting different chemicals into your brain that you are with some of your other free-time activities. Self-discipline is needs to be a part of our daily digital diet. (And if you have a problem with it, as I do sometimes, download a helper like Self-Control for Mac.)

PS—Things I did do on my vacation: ran a lot, did yoga, ate relatively well (no peanut butter M&Ms all week!), watched a few Oscar contenders, read Girlbomb’s amazing memoir, drew comics, napped, drank margaritas. Other random analog things, too. It was utterly fantastic.

“First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin” - Leonard Cohen

If the recent inundation of billboards promoting the Chrome browser on the streets of my adopted city is any indication, it appears someone at Google is familiar with the song and is following a similar plan – have you noticed any sudden increase in advertising for Chrome in your neighborhood too?

Chrome is over two years old, though – why the promotional push now?

In terms of profitability, Google remains essentially a one-trick pony – and although search-driven contextual advertising is one pretty nifty trick (and one that Google’s pretty good at), the company has had less than a Midas touch when it comes to following that success up in other markets (think Buzz, Wave, or Google TV).

YouTube?  The site was acquired for $1.65 billion US four years ago and has yet to turn a profit.

Android?  Every day, another estimated 200,000 Android phones come online – yet each activation contributes no direct revenue to Google whatsoever.  The Android platform was developed as free open source software, solely to support Google’s core contextual advertising business by allowing the company to control as much of the search experience on mobile devices as possible.

It turns out these are all merely ancillary ventures – Google’s big-picture ‘second act’, the technology with the potential to dwarf even their search-driven advertising business, is cloud-based computing.  In support of that goal, as loyal subjects of Google we’ve been treated to not only a spate of free internet applications over the past few years (Gmail, Google Docs, et al), but also to the Chrome browser – the subject of the billboard blitz  Berlin currently finds itself in the midst of.

The important thing to understand about the Chrome browser is that it was never intended as merely a competitor to IE/Firefox/Safari – rather, it’s nothing less than the first iteration in the development of the Chrome operating system, upon which Google’s future cloud-based computing paradigm will be based (in Google’s version of the future, the browser is the operating system).  In that context, it’s a bit surprising that Chrome hasn’t already been promoted more heavily than it has – after all, the company enjoys unparalleled direct access to internet eyeballs (that is, until Facebook decides to build a browser).

Despite the relatively soft sell, though, the Chrome application has still managed to creep to a respectable 10% – 14% browser market share (depending on who you ask) – just in time for the Chrome operating system to make its debut on selected devices later this year.

In the meantime, if the streets and U-bahn stations of Berlin are any indication, it appears Google is ramping up the promotion of their Chrome browser (and not incidentally, the Chrome brand) in anticipation of their cloud-based OS – and  they’re not above using decidedly old-school media such as billboards to do it.

Personal computing is changing.  The post-desktop OS will either be based on an ‘App Store’ model (Apple’s just launched an iOS-style App Store for their Mac computers) or a thin client, cloud-based model – such as Google’s Chrome OS.

With the advent of multiple tablet options, 2011 is shaping up to be a battle between the two.  What you have to like about Google is that with both Chrome and Android, they have a viable horse in both races.

P.S. Not surprisingly, Chrome is increasingly in the news these days:

• Chrome cancels native support for the H.264 video codec
• Google retains Chrome product head VP despite Twitter poaching attempt
• Google pays record amount for Chrome bug discovery

This blog is written by a German living in New York and an American living in Berlin – a uniquely reciprocal situation, and one that we haven’t explored much yet.  True, we’ve each written about our respective summer vacations (here and here) – but maybe a more relevant way to explore our transatlantic perspective here at digitalmissive would be to compare and contrast the two big upcoming consumer electronics trade shows: CES in Las Vegas, and CEBIT in Hannover.

So that’s what we’re gonna do:  later this month, look for a few words from Andreas after he returns from CES in Las Vegas – and in March, I’ll chime in with my impressions of CEBIT from Hannover.

I think I’ve gotten the short end of the stick, weather-wise…

Ikea – hey, what’s not to like? You pick and choose from its vast furniture selection exactly what you like, pass through a (relatively) quick check-out and off you go, enjoying your new purchases.

So, how does a popular self-serve furniture store figure into this yours truly digital technology and media blog?

Attending the recently-held Paley Media Center’s IC 2010 event in New York, a-la-carte programingwas among the hot hot button issues. The notion that one day we could freely pick and choose Ikea-style (and thus pay only for) our personal cable, satellite, or IPTV channel favorites scares the living daylight out of some while others believe it’s a must or at the least - unavoidable.

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When you live in a foreign country, sometimes it’s the little things:

Upon moving to Berlin last year I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was thedailyshow.com not geo-blocked over here, but entire episodes would stream with no commercial interruption whatsoever!  I know, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, does it – still, I’d get a little kick out of that commercial-free skip from one segment to the next each and every time – it felt like I was getting away with something.

Like I said, it’s the little things.

Until recently, that is – watching an episode at home a few weeks ago, I was surprised to find a low-budget German commercial for a shooter video game inserted into my previously commercial-free Daily Show stream at each segment break!  Interestingly, the commercial’s audio was missing and the video resolution was awful.  More interestingly still, after the spot, I was returned not back to the start of the next segment, but was instead deposited at some arbitrary point three quarters of the way through the episode.

It’s been that way for a week now: the same soundless, grainy German shooter video game commercial during each commercial break, followed by a return to some random spot later in the episode.

It all felt like such a hack that I got curious – so as a quick experiment, from my office one day I fast-forwarded to a few of the segment breaks I had seen carrying the soundless, grainy German shooter video game commercial when streamed from home  …and lo and behold, no soundless, grainy German shooter video game commercial!

This meant the source of the commercial is relatively local.  Still, it could be there’s nothing shady going on at all: my home ISP could be streaming from a content delivery network with Comedy Central-sanctioned advertising support, and my office could be streaming from a CDN without.  However, given how thoroughly hacked the insertion of the commercial (and the commercial itself) feels, I wonder if something more ‘informal’ is  happening – could it be that my residential ISP is recognizing this particular traffic as a particularly popular video, and so is buffering the stream themselves while they (somewhat unsuccessfully) attempt to insert a commercial they (rather than Comedy Central) sold?

It’s not such a far-fetched premise: I’m continually amazed at the expensive original recording music drops being used on German TV- there’s simply no way some of these low-profile German TV programs are paying Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith and Nirvana for the use of 3 of their most recognizable hits, all within the space of a minute or two – maybe things are just looser over here

On the other hand, detecting the presence of the stream would require some level of packet inspection – something I’d be surprised could happen in privacy-minded (and Google Street View-unfriendly) Germany.

The soundless, grainy German shooter video game commercial – it remains a mystery.

I apologize! For once I have a truly time-sensitive post and now I am eight days late!

Yup! Eight days ago, on 10/10/10 your clock struck 10:10:10. Did you even notice?

To be exact, I am 196 hours behind posting this, precisely marking when at least New York and the rest of the EST time zone experienced this somewhat unique time date combination.

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I too have been on a beach holiday this summer.  In keeping with our transatlantic bent here at digitalmissive, though, my beach holiday was on the lovely island of Hiddensee in the Baltic Sea – where there’s not only no mobile data coverage to be had, there are also no cars to be had.

There are plenty of bikes, though – so we went for a ride on day one and ended up riding by this beautiful meadow (most of the island’s uninhabited and devoted to a national park/nature preserve).

Not that we’ve been reduced to posting vacation pictures here on digitalmissive, but rather to illustrate a point…

What was the first thing I thought of  as I rode by?

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Forget it. Nope! It can’t be done. I for one am unable to fully shake the Interweb.

Mentally prepared to ditch all calls, emails, texts, and social network pings, I was convinced I would be able to enjoy my nine day beach vacation in good old fashioned peace and quiet, exactly for the courage to disconnect myself from constant digital connectivity.

I know, probably no small feat for someone otherwise “always on” (I work in New York, on Wall Street, and for a telco. Oy!), the idea was, just once, no Blackberry voice or office email, no laptop, no iPod or iPad, or whatever else would get me to the Web.

Yet, come Monday (day three), I was back “on the wagon”, scouring for IP access as if I had money riding on it.

Turns out, according to The Economist I do!

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Here in the west, the intrinsic value of individual innovation and intellectual property is such an ingrained ideal we can take it for granted sometimes.  Not so in Asia, where the blatant imitation of successful products is often the sincerest form of flattery.

This is especially true when it comes to popular culture and technology.  Twitter has been so phenomenally successful that it’s now arguably both a cultural and technological phenomenon  – so maybe it’s worth taking a look at a few of the Asian Twitter clones out there.

The first thing one notices is that most of these sites use the same shade of turquoise blue and the same style of font used in the original.  Again, to western eyes, copying the Twitter look and feel so slavishly might seem utterly shameless – yet it’s just another example of the how different the Asian mindset is from ours when it comes to such matters.

It should come as no surprise there are several Twitter knock-offs in China – but there are also more innovative sites as well.  Take, for example, digu (below).  This Chinese Twitter clone features an interface that pops up real-time geo-located balloons of posts as they occur (much like similar western sites such as twittervision).

It’s worth noting, though, that digu’s interface is really just a Google Maps-powered mashup.  It’ll be interesting to see if Google continues to make their API available to Chinese sites like digu  in the event they do end up pulling out of the search business in China…

Listen, the day your mobile network dies and you find yourself amazed how much that upsets you, that might be the day you realize – your wireless devices, and the networks they are tied to, by now are of utmost importance in your live.

To that point, earlier this week, part of T-Mobile’s US network suffered interruptions for the later part of a single day. The resulting outcry was significant.

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